• Super Admin
• 08 Mar, 2026

Once again, the International Women's Day (IWD), is here again, to spotlight and celebrate women across all races and walks of life. The global day, which is marked on March 8th of every year, celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women across the world. So, today, Sunday March 8, 2026, the world is celebrating women across the globe and their achievements, as well as, reflecting on their challenges. This year's celebration is unique as it is being celebrated under two distinct themes: "Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls" and "Give to Gain". The "Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls" theme focuses on dismantling structural barriers, such as discriminatory laws and weak legal protections, to ensure equality for all women and girls. It emphasizes a call to action to defend the rule of law and end impunity. The "Give to Gain" theme focuses on the power of investment, mentorship, and collaboration, arguing that when society invests in women, it leads to collective prosperity and multiplied progress. It highlights that empowering women is not charity, but a strategic, smart investment. However, to drive home the essence of IWD 2026 in Nigeria, below are some top Nigerian female visual artists who have and are still impacting lives through their works. They are truly living out the themes, defending, mentoring and empowering their folks through art. Angela Amami Isiuwe is top Nigerian artists, with an incredible mastery of her craft. She creates work with predominantly female subjects, reframes the experiences of women as central to society and also draws attention to their successes and pains. In doing so, she presents women as natural beings, affording them equal dignity and complexity as with men, which is all the more significant in a highly patriarchal Nigerian society. Isiuwe plays with the ability to convey messages in minimalistic tones and examines how intentionality fosters self and social identity. Working with oil, acrylic, and watercolour, she depicts swiftly rendered freehand linear figures that evoke emotions and embrace the power of solitude. Here, solitude represents freedom and introspection. Isiuwe's practice interprets the meditative act of metabolizing pain and releasing turbulent emotions. The linear form of her work is a study of the body structure -- its movement and language. Viewers are invited to engage with the emotion expressed and insert personal interpretations. Her works have been featured in exhibitions across Nigeria and internationally. Born in 1994, the multidisciplinary artist, who is based in Lagos, obtained a degree in Fashion Design at the Polimoda Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing in Florence, Italy in 2017. During her studies in fashion, she translated her own art production into clothing, creating conceptual and sculptural wearable pieces. Her works are mainly figurative with a focus on portraiture unique, while their uniqueness is offering a mix between cubism and abstraction. Her technique is unique. She skillfully combines abstraction and figuration and that was evident in the way she created voluptuous figures in varied graceful poses, thus celebrating the female form in a refreshing and lyrical style. She debuted in the art market just in 2017 and has achieved great feats for herself within a short period is enough to trigger interest. She is definitely among African female artists on the rise, as well as one artist to look out for this year. Also, she takes a playful and purist approach to her work by focusing on form rather than detail, through the use of different artistic mediums. Moreover, the inspiration behind her works stem from her personal and shared experiences as a woman, as well as observations of any given space she occupies at a time. She tries to capture these experiences through her unique and experimental use of colours and shapes, which she believes creates a sense of simplicity and calmness out of a rather complex scenario. She exaggerates the figures or displaces them, as she believes it is her own way of confronting how she sees things. She also likes to isolate shapes from the subjects/objects and put them together to create a new composition. Born in 1989, Chukwumereogo Nnenna Okeke is a visual artist who explores themes of gender and culture, and uses them as a metaphor in assessing broader issues of socioeconomic and political inequality. While mostly likening human forms to landscapes in textured drawings, her works question the limitations of tradition by playing with the scale of her subjects. She works with acrylic, charcoal and pastel, and has begun experimenting with locally sourced materials like beeswax and clay. She creates textured visual worlds that question the weight of tradition and the inequalities embedded within it. Often likening the human form to landscape, her works explore scale, distortion, and materiality, challenging how we perceive bodies, boundaries, and belonging. Using acrylic, charcoal, and pastel, and more recently, beeswax and clay, her evolving practice draws from memory, environment, and resistance. Her recent outing was as part of a group exhibition Underland, where her featured works include: To Speak in Other Tongues, 2025, When Shall I See My Home? 2024, among others. Through these works, Chukwumereogo reclaims the body as a site of resistance, using scale and abstraction to question systems of social and political exclusion. Born in 1998, Shaibu-Salami Ashiata is a contemporary mixed media artist from Kogi State, who grew up in Ibadan. She is a painter who considers life from different perspectives. Her journey into art was inspired by her urge to communicate about freedom: the freedom to express ourselves, the freedom to live and the freedom to dream. Ashiata's love of art led her to explore diverse mediums and techniques. In her paintings she uses paint, mixed media collages, impasto, sponging, picture and paper transfers. Her work is influenced by her love of writing, music, and travel. Ashiata's work explores the complexities of the human mind, emotional growth, and the unseen layers of self. Her work captures this contrast gently, without overstating, offering a quiet reflection on the journeys we all take both personal and shared. Through these works, Ashiata invites us to reflect on the rawness of internal struggle and the quiet beauty of self-examination. Taiye Idahor grew up in Lagos. She studied Fine Art at the Prestigious Yaba College of Technology Lagos Nigeria where she graduated in 2007 with a Higher National Diploma (HND) after specialising in sculpture at the college. In the last few years Taiye Idahor has worked significantly within the concept of identity and women using hair as a visual language. Tangled through the issues of trade, beauty, the environment and globalisation, she examines how these factors build the woman's identity in today's Africa but in particular Lagos, Nigeria where she has lived all her life. She has participated in a number of exhibitions and workshops both at home and abroad including Nigeria our Nigeria, Presidential Inauguration Exhibition Abuja Nigeria 2011; the specially curated at the Dubai Art Fair, Marker 2013; her first solo exhibition "Hairvolution" in Lagos Nigeria 2014 and Timeline, a residency exhibition in Johannesburg South Africa 2015. Taiye Idahor also works part time with the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos Nigeria as project coordinator and curatorial assistant. Source: https://businessday.ng/life/article/iwd-celebrating-some-gifted-women-artists/